


Of Dagger Digging Hearts/Of Cotton

by daxometry



Series: Of Entangling/Of Ensnaring [1]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Alternate Universe - Detectives, Backstory, Gen, yeet bitches!!!! starting out w backstory before the actual multi fic!!!! Kill me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-30
Updated: 2017-05-30
Packaged: 2018-11-06 18:31:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11041851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daxometry/pseuds/daxometry
Summary: Whispers paint a mural of the Ice Tiger, stories of horror and unbelievability. He killed his family, they say. He was an orphan, they say. He was born a killer, he was born animal, they revere.Yuri Plisetsky, was in fact, none of these things. He was a boy.





	Of Dagger Digging Hearts/Of Cotton

There were three things to know about Yuri Plisetsky; he valued hygiene to the point it sometimes appeared silly, he was quick to anger, and he perceived murder as more of a chore than laundry.

The appreciation for cleanliness had been instilled within him at a very young age by his grandfather. Cleanliness was not simply a virtue, but a luxury the Plisetsky family hadn’t always been able to afford. You washed your hands before and after supper, you brushed your teeth in the morning and at night; that was how things were run.

Once, as a child, Yuri had awoken from his sleep freezing. The light from the hall, meant to calm his fear of the dark, only cast shadows along his line of books and darkened the depth of his seemingly never ending closet. Shapes were pronounced in the dark, he could make out faces staring jarringly at him, never moving. When Yuri closed his eyes, he only whimpered. Not looking at a monster was worse than staring it in the eye. Yuri dared to dart a single foot out from beneath his covers. When nothing grabbed his leg and pulled him into the darkness, he settled the foot on the ground, gradually slipping from his plush bed until both feet were planted.

Yuri’s slight form snuck past his door and ventured the short distance to his Grandfather’s bedroom. One hand lay flat against the dark oak of the door, his other turned the knob slowly. The child tried to prevent the hinges from screeching, gently pushing the door open.

_“Dedushka?”_ He spoke softly. A pained noise reached Yuri’s ears. The room was dark from where he peeked inside, and at first he couldn’t tell if his grandfather was inside the room at all. Fear struck through him like an arrow.

_“Deda?”_ He hissed more urgently.

His grandfather shifted in the darkness, a familiar figure rising out of bed, and relief washed over him. Yuri let the door fall open at the sight of him, letting light from the hall stream inward.

Grandfather’s face was pale, as white as the Russian snow that could be seen falling outside his bedside window. His face was twisted into an awful grimace, with eyes squeezed shut and lips puckered tight. Yuri remembers thinking, mindlessly: _Dedushka has been eating lemons,_ before his Grandfather staggered in a way completely foreign to Yuri, and Yuri rushed forward to steady him.

“Yura,” He rasped, eyes jerking open in panic. Yuri noted that one of his big meaty claws gripped at his chest, as if his heart would fall out if he didn’t hold it in place himself. Yuuri’s grip on his grandfather’s arm tightened. A sense of awareness seemed to wash over him at the touch of his grandson, finally. It was like he’d noticed him clearly for the first time, wild eyes glazing over.

“Dial 103 on the landline,” Grandfather ordered. And then, in the eerily calm fashion only those close to death can manage, he nodded knowingly to himself with a smile.

“I’m having a heart attack!” He declared surely, to which a nine year old Yuri had replied, very dumbly, _“What?”_

His grandfather had then proceeded to change his underwear, switch his pajama bottoms for thick snow overalls, and brush his teeth. He’d started to brush back what was left of his hair when a desperate, sickened Yuri began to push him towards the front door. The ambulance finally arrived in the middle of his grandfather insisting it’d be _too cold; I’m putting my coat on!_

There had been a time Yuri’s grandfather spent his last cents on cold, hardened bread he didn’t have the patience to savor. Sourdough turned sour was still dinner, the pipes had frozen over but it didn’t matter because the water was turned off, and every winter yielded cuts and calluses that had no place on boyish limbs. His grandfather’s sense of honor was a living, bleeding thing. After witnessing it first hand, Yuri’s own flame of Plisetsky pride began to kindle.

In the following years, it was his pride that kept him strong for his grandfather. After the first heart attack that subsequently required heart surgery, his health continued to deteriorate as they didn’t have the income to keep up with his medications. Surgeries needed were put off, or collected debt, medications doing a fine job of keeping all but debt collectors at bay. Finally, a month before his thirteenth birthday, it all caught up to Yuri and his Grandfather. He had his second heart attack, resulting in a five way bypassing. He was in a permanent room at the hospital, recovery slow. With his only guardian not at home, Yuri was forced to move in with a family friend: Yakov Feltsman, and his wife, Lilia Baranovskaya.

The hospitalization wasn’t the breaking point, nor was the move. It wasn’t his Grandfather’s exhaustion despite staying in a bed for most of the day, nor was it the bills he saw one evening scattered around Grandpa for budgeting; the breaking point was Lilia, talking about her career as one of the Bolshoi’s ballerinas.

“People who can be reborn as many times as necessary are the strong ones.”

 

 

He’d grown up around Yakov. He knew vaguely he and his Grandfather had been in a war together,or something along those lines. Living with Feltsman was different. He had a front row seat to suspicious men, arriving at the house at all hours of the night, business meetings that ended with a surreptitious glance down the hall to make sure Yuri wasn’t around. He knew Yakov carried a gun. He’d heard the whispers of “Papa Feltsman.”

He cornered him in his own office one day.

“I’ll do whatever you want, if you pay for Grandfather’s operation.” At first, Yakov raised his eyebrows. Then, he gave a deep, bellowing laugh Yuri had only heard him make before in Grandpa’s company. Yuri hissed through his teeth.

  
“I have terms!” He growled. His heart pounded. Yuri’s mask of indifference had broke embarrassingly fast. The conversation felt like grains of sand slipping through his hands already. It felt like his Grandfather, was slipping through his hands.

It was like he was hurtling towards a trainwreck; an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object.

His voice carried, and cracked unforgivingly. “One,” Yuri counted on a finger, “I want full respiration-” Yuri flushed scarlet, “Restoration- Pay off surgery bills, and whatever fancy new meds that get added to the list, and then I want our house back.” Yakov’s nostrils were flaring, he looked scandalized.

“I will be in your service for whatever you want, as long as you need, until _Deda_ croaks,” He blurts, eyebrows furrowing. Sand slipping through his hands. Tiny grains impossible to catch.

Yakov stood up so abruptly his chair screeched against the floor, and it only felt natural.

_“Izbalovannyy rebenok,”_ Yakov spat. He fixed Yuri with an angry, incredulous stare, towering over the child. The words spun around Yuri’s head like tiny tornadoes. _Spoiled brat._ His throat tightened painfully. His breath wouldn’t come. It was a death sentence, if Yuri had ever seen one. Yakov’s face was screwed up, and Yuri could feel in the roots of his teeth and the cold of his toes and the burn in his eyes the shame. Not shame for what he’d said, but the shame that came with not being believed. The shame that hung like a poisonous gas in the air, burning rehearsed words off your lolling, thick, tongue and burned you from the inside out in the most acidic way. Yuri’s eyes locked with Yakov’s.

He was twelve, and he suddenly didn’t have to wonder how someone could kill another person.

Instead of storming out, something flickered across Yakov’s face “I’d have paid,” He started, “If I knew your _kozel_ of a Grandfather would accept it.”

Then, stone wall. No give. His face was inscrutable; even the perpetually permanent frown carved into the lines of his face gave away nothing. Yuri swore he saw red. When Yuri opened his mouth to speak, Yakov shushed him angrily, despite not looking willing to say anything more.

Seconds passed, in which Yakov took his seat again. “We’re... brothers,” Yakov said, like he was testing the words on his tongue. Yuri is confused immediately, but Yakov continues on, troubled and speaking almost as if to himself.

“Despite this, your Grandfather has sworn never to be indebted, to me, or any of the _Bratva_ , again.” Yakov’s old bones crack and pop as he stretches back leisurely.

“He would not be the one indebted, I would b-” Yuri can’t help but shout.

"- I could never do that to his trust!" Yakov yells over him.

There is no gentle, tentative explanation, just red cheeks and gritted teeth. Seething at each other, Yuri would eventually recognize this is what Yakov Feltsman looks like when he’s grieving.

Resolve felt like a bullet in his mouth, metal clunking sharply against the last of his baby teeth. Bitterly, he shoots. “If you do not let me in, I will find business elsewhere.” Yuri crossed his legs. He hoped Yakov felt the acidity of shame upon him. The shame of not believing.

“What would your Grandfather say?”

“If he’s alive to say anything at all, there would be no debt, only gratitude.” Yuri shot back heatedly, _“Papa Feltsman.”_

Yakov nodded, got up and pushed his chair in, then left Yuri sitting in Yakov’s own office.

 

 

 

Even after avoiding any sign of Yuri for a week, Yuri knew without having to be told what Yakov’s decision would be. He walked into the hospital after school to find a sleeping grandfather, and not a single remnant of their financial devastation could be found despite his siege to the room. With a mixture of relief, and dread knotted tight in his stomach, Yuri had wept.

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this out awhile ago and got this whole au goin but idk if ill touch it now!! figured id post SMTH at least lmaoo
> 
> twitter @ daxthony


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